Authorities in the Gansu city of Jiuquan issued a level III emergency plague alert yesterday after pneumonic plague killed a local resident.
After the cause of his death was confirmed, 151 people in contact with the man were quarantined. A total of four isolation centers have been erected in Yumen City, Chijin Town and Xihu Village, as well as an unnamed rural era.
Roads in and out of Jiuquan have been closed, including the Lianhuo Expressway that connects Jiangsu and Xinjiang.
Plagues past and present
The plague originally arose in China and made its way to Europe via the Silk Road in the 14th century, where it became known as the Black Death and killed up to 60 per cent of the continent's population.
Hong Kong recently marked the 120th anniversary of the devastating 1894 plague outbreak that decimated its population, drastically changed how the colony was governed and produced a scientific breakthrough with global repercussions.
Swiss scientist Alexandre Yersin first identified the bacillus that causes plague that year in his ramshackle bamboo lab on the colony's shores, finally giving researchers worldwide the foundation they needed to begin working out ways to prevent and cure the disease.
The 1894 outbreak made its way from Yunnan to Hong Kong via Guangzhou, and struck hardest in the area of Tai Ping Shan, established by the British as a settlement for Chinese workers. Hygiene levels were deplorable, and the disease spread like wildfire through the tiny, windowless dwellings without sewage or drainage into which multi-generational families were crammed.
The tragedy forced a major re-think of public hygiene in Hong Kong, and to this day it remains a primary concern for both the territory's government and its people. Whenever Hongkongers pooh-pooh (no pun intended) mainlanders who treat their streets, MTR platforms and shopping malls like public lavatories, they're harking back to the spirit of '94.
Over the past 20 years, more than 50,000 human cases of the plague have been reported, and the World Health Organization has classified it as a re-emerging disease. The last plague outbreak to occur in China was in Qinghai province in August 2009, when a herdsman caught the disease from his dog, which had been infected by a marmot.
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